Reservist Point of View:
Most folks on this board are probably smarter than I am so I'll just confess that I had to get up to speed on this pretty quick when my retirement paper work showed up. The reason I had to spin up was that once you get transfered to the Retired Reserves you only have 90 days to decline the option or your automatically enrolled. Anyway, you can find all sorts of information on the web about it, but the down and dirty is that the premium is deducted from your monthly retirement pay and in return your spouse will receive benefits after you die, or if you die before you receive retired pay (age 60) they'll still get the benefits (pay and medical coverage). HOwever, they'll only receive 50% of the monthly $ amount of what you were receiving or would have received if your death precedes theirs.
Other stuff: when you accept or decline, both you and your designated survivor have to sign in front of a witness and have that document notarized.
There are provisions for if you spouse dies before you receive your retirement pay or you're no longer married to that spouse. You can get smart at the DFAS website:
https://www.dfas.mil/retiredmilitary/provide/sbp/
Most folks on this board are probably smarter than I am so I'll just confess that I had to get up to speed on this pretty quick when my retirement paper work showed up. The reason I had to spin up was that once you get transfered to the Retired Reserves you only have 90 days to decline the option or your automatically enrolled. Anyway, you can find all sorts of information on the web about it, but the down and dirty is that the premium is deducted from your monthly retirement pay and in return your spouse will receive benefits after you die, or if you die before you receive retired pay (age 60) they'll still get the benefits (pay and medical coverage). HOwever, they'll only receive 50% of the monthly $ amount of what you were receiving or would have received if your death precedes theirs.
Other stuff: when you accept or decline, both you and your designated survivor have to sign in front of a witness and have that document notarized.
There are provisions for if you spouse dies before you receive your retirement pay or you're no longer married to that spouse. You can get smart at the DFAS website:
https://www.dfas.mil/retiredmilitary/provide/sbp/